People might not be selling or buying as many homes as they used to, but it doesn’t stop us window-shopping. And that’s good news for online property site Rightmove (RMV) because it means that more site visits help to encourage more advertising.
In fact, over one million residential properties were advertised on the site, with visitor numbers up 4 per cent, averaging over 125m visits per month. Crucially, average revenue per advertiser rose 10 per cent to £922 per month. At the same time, customers paying to use the service rose by 2 per cent to a record 20,500.
Rightmove continued to introduce more technical innovations, and launched its Rightmove Discover product in July 2017. This uses predictive analytics to identify the most likely potential sellers in an area, and markets to them on behalf of an agent. Since the launch, this has led to 16,000 email leads to its customers. Other new tools will be introduced this year to help agents become more efficient, including a process to help prioritise vendor enquiries from Rightmove, and a more efficient way of dealing with rental tenants ahead of the ban on tenant fees.
Analysts at Numis are forecasting adjusted pre-tax profits of £202.5m and EPS of 178p for the year to December 2018 (from £184.3 and 162p in 2017).
| RIGHTMOVE (RMV) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 4,374p | MARKET VALUE: | £3.98bn | |
| TOUCH: | 4,374-4,378p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 4,595p | LOW: 3,846p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 1.2% | PE RATIO: | 28 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 19p* | NET CASH: | £20.9m | |
| Year to 31 Dec | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2013 | 140 | 97 | 74 | 28 |
| 2014 | 167 | 122 | 98 | 35 |
| 2015 | 192 | 137 | 114 | 43 |
| 2016 | 220 | 162 | 138 | 51 |
| 2017 | 243 | 178 | 157 | 54 |
| % change | +11 | +10 | +14 | +6 |
| Ex-div: | 03 May | |||
| Payment: | 01 Jun | |||
| *Includes intangible assets of £3.3m, or 4p a share | ||||
